Duché: Led Congress in prayer but died in disgrace as an early traitor.

The US Supreme Court announced this week that it will take up the question of whether it’s OK for Greece, New York, to open meetings of the town board by letting citizens voluntarily offer a prayer. It’s a potential landmark case in the contest over religion in the public square.

But it’s not the first time this question has arisen. The moment invites a telling of the story of the Reverend Jacob Duché. It was he who, in 1774, gave the most famous prayer ever delivered at a governmental meeting in America. His tale takes a surprise turn that could not be more timely.

Duché’s prayer was delivered at the start of the First Continental Congress. Boston was occupied by the British, and war was about to break out. The Congress met at Philadelphia, where Duché was rector of Christ Church. In its graveyard, seven signers of the Declaration of Independence would eventually be laid to rest.

Yet there were cries of protest when a suggestion was made that the Congress be opened with a prayer. For the delegates included Episcopalians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Catholics, and maybe followers of other religions or none.

Besides, it was not a church social but a revolution that was brewing.

The outcry was stilled by one of the most radical of the revolutionaries, Samuel Adams. Gov. Mitt Romney told the story when he was preparing his campaign for president in 2008. Romney quoted Sam Adams as saying he’d be prepared to hear a prayer from anyone of piety, so long as he was a patriot.

So Reverend Duché stepped up and preached on the 35th Psalm. Then he prayed that God who reigned with “power supreme and uncontrolled over all Kingdoms, Empires and Governments” would “look down in mercy” on “these our American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor . . .”

Duché’s prayer had, by all accounts, a powerful effect — so much so that one can wonder whether our revolution would have succeeded without the appeal to God. Today the prayer is published continuously on the Web site of the chaplain of the House of Representatives in Washington.

There is, however, more to the story, which is every bit as illuminating as the fact that the revolutionary Congress welcomed a prayer. It is about what happened next, a story we first heard from one of Samuel Adams’ biographers, Ira Stoll.

It turns out that the Revolutionary War tested us severely, so much so that Reverend Duché fell away. In October 1777, two months before our army staggered into Valley Forge, Duché dipped his quill in the ink of treason and sent a letter to George Washington, urging him to give up.

“Under so many discouraging circumstances, can Virtue, can Honour, can the Love of your Country, prompt you to proceed?” he wrote. “Humanity itself, and sure humanity is no stranger to your breast, calls upon you to desist.”

He went so far as to appeal to Washington to “represent to Congress the indispensible necessity of rescinding the hasty and ill-advised declaration of Independency — Recommend, and you have an undoubted right to recommend, an immediate cessation of hostilities.”

Washington was infuriated, and sent the letter to Congress, along with a note repudiating its sentiments. Duché himself fled to London, and spent the rest of the Revolutionary War in the bosom of our enemy. He was ill when, after the war, he returned to America, where he died in disgrace.

This is a story to remember as the Supreme Court wrestles with where to set the line on prayer at government meetings. It’s a tough call.

The Constitution, after all, prohibits Congress from making any law either respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

What the story of Reverend Duché and his prayer for the Revolution reminds us is that in respect of government affairs, public prayer does not cover all sins. It’s a reminder that what counts in the end is not the piety but the patriotism.